title: Sustained operations in confined-space military vehicles.
abstract: This paper reports 2 baseline studies and one experiment performed in a confined-space military vehicle concerning the effects on fitness and performance of time in a sitting posture and workstation characteristics. On average physical fitness decreased by slightly more than 10% per hour, the observation performance decreased by 30% per hour, and the technical performance (of gunners) showed a relatively small decrease, i.e., less than 5% per hour. So-called active breaks (changing sitting into standing and walking) led to a significant reduction in the decrease of physical fitness, almost reducing it to zero. Furthermore, the level of confinement was shown to affect physical fitness.
authors.affiliation: TNO Human Factors, Soesterberg, The Netherlands. delleman1@zonnet.nl
authors.forename: Nico J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Delleman
authors.forename: Véronique
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Colaciuri
authors.forename: Emeric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wiederkehr
authors.forename: Pierre J L
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Valk
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D020378:Confined Spaces; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008887:Military Medicine; D010809:Physical Fitness; D011187:Posture